Who are you when you’re not looking?
Here’s a five-minute test. Answer quickly. Don’t deliberate. The inner critic is slower than the inner fire – you want to outrun it.
Three people
Name them:
Someone you admire but don’t really like. Someone you trust but don’t know that well. Someone deeply flawed that you idolize anyway.
Write down the names. Don’t explain them yet.
Three traits
Now, one word each:
If you don’t like them, why do you admire them? If you don’t know them that well, why do you trust them? If they’re so flawed, why do you idolize them?
One word per answer. Write them down.
Three roles
Take each pair of those words and find a single word that holds both traits. Could be a job, a personality type, a social role. Architect. Hothead. Peacekeeper. One word per pair.
One archetype
Look at the three roles. Write down whatever words come – a few or a dozen, doesn’t matter. Then read back through the list slowly until one hits back. Makes you point at the air. Makes you say yes out loud.
That’s your fireline. Where the flames start.
Here’s my own example, so you can see how the logic works – or doesn’t, which is also the point.
I admire a senior manager I worked with who I didn’t much like. I completely trust an acquaintance I barely know. My hero is Batman – deeply flawed emotionally, but capable of holding his own with people a hundred times more powerful than him.
The traits: the manager was brilliant. The acquaintance is relentlessly realistic. Batman is fiercely moral.
The roles: brilliant plus real equals mastermind. Real plus moral equals steward. Brilliant plus moral equals sovereign.
Put those together and I get architect – not the building designer, but the general role. The one who sees the whole structure and knows where the load-bearing walls are.
You might get something completely different. My path through this exercise won’t be yours. That’s not a bug – it’s the whole point. You have to misdirect your inner critic just enough to slide past them.
But when you see the answer, you’ll know it.
Principle seven: be who you are. This exercise is just a way to catch yourself being it before you have time to perform something else instead.